Insensitive Police - say Politicians

The Baltimore City Police Commissioner and City officials state that the comments made by the Baltimore Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police were insensitive. The comments expressed relief and a sense of justice over the dismissal of all charges against a Baltimore Police Officer in the death of a drug dealer.

Citizens would expect the Police Commissioner to support his officers and be happy that his officers were found not guilty by the Black judge hearing the case. The judge carefully listed all of the problems with the prosecutor's case - the main problem being the complete lack of ANY evidence. We would expect the Police Commissioner to be jumping for joy! Under his watch, the officer was found not guilty. Instead, this gutless wonder bowed to political pressure and criticized the FOP for being insensitive in their comments!

We expect the city politicians to play the game. The trouble is that the Police Commissioner is just a Baltimore City political employee. It was not always this way. The Police Commissioner used to be appointed by the governor to remove city politics from the police department. Today, the mayor simply appoints a kiss-up.

Mr. Commissioner and members of the Baltimore City Council! Was it insensitive when Blacks robbed, burglarized, assaulted, burned and looted? I do not recall any criticism of those felony crimes.

Was it insensitive of the States Attorney to demand that looters and arsonist be given space? Was it insensitive of the Police Commissioner to ignore his sworn duty to uphold the law? Was he insensitive by not ordering his officers to enforce the law and protect the citizens? Was the Commissioner insensitive to allow my 72-year-old sister to remain a prisoner in her home because of the lack of police effort to control the looters?

How I wish that EVERY Baltimore City Officer had laid their guns and badges on the floor of every police station and went on strike. (They could not lay their badges on the floor of the Police Commissioner's office because it is guarded by goons.

BREXIT AND TRUMP

The Brexit vote is about blaming ‘them’ or ‘the others’ for everything that is wrong in the lives of citizens and the nation.

The rise of Donald Trump is about blaming ‘them’ or ‘the others’ for everything that is wrong in the lives of citizens and our own nation.

Regardless of the final outcome, Brexit or remain, Trump or Clinton, the economy is not going to improve. Jobs will not return to America. America will not magically change into the 1950’s.

If the fantasy of 11 million people being deported from the USA and a giant magical wall ended illegal immigration, our economy may actually worsen. Does even one rational person really believe that suddenly taxes will be reduced because ‘those people’ are gone? In a few states where draconian laws resulted in an exodus of people, taxes increased! Politicians cited sharp declines in sales tax revenue. Businesses declared bankruptcy or simply closed.

Does anyone believe that the quality of education will increase because schools are no longer overcrowded or need to provide bilingual education? Maybe you believe that prisons, courts and the police will ask for budget reductions without those illegals to contend with.

Brexit and Mr. Trump are signs that the average worker is fed-up and angry. The average worker wants someone to blame (other than the 1% of the super-rich that keep the average worker broke). People of color are always popular targets because they are easily identified and ‘different’.

Nothing much will change. Should Mr. Trump win the election, he will blame congress for the failure of his magic pixie dust that was supposed to change everything. Should Mrs. Clinton win, Trump and conservatives will blame her election for the lousy economy and lousy jobs. In either event, the Muslims remain a convenient target and we always have the Blacks to blame for everything.

An interesting side note: we conservatives love to tout self-reliance and criticize the whiners and complainers while we whine, complain and blame others for our misfortunes.

Buyer Be Ware!

GOOGLE the product name and the word ‘complaints’ before you buy.

People read Internet adds, view Internet photos and videos and plunk down big bucks without investing one-minute to read the complaints about products that are easily found with a simple GOOGLE search.

Although every product and service will likely have a few complaints, the minute it takes to read the complaints is worth our time.

Here is an example. A friend of mine in law enforcement was excited to tell me that he just received his Tactical Shadowhawk X800 Flashlight for $56 (it normally sells for $116 according to the company website). He told me about the amazing power of this flashlight and I asked him to show me the website where he made this amazing purchase.

My friend watched as I opened a new tab in my browser and googled the words “Shadowhawk X800 complaints” and watched my friends face sadden as he read the results. I clicked on one of the ‘Do Not Buy’ results of that google search and we read: 

“I believe this company, the subject of numerous BBB complaints is a previous incarnation of Shadowhawk. They've changed the name, but the product is still a rebranded Ultrafire 878 and the shady behavior combined with internet hype matches.”

It was easy to find hundreds of such complaints.

We visited the Ultrafire 878 website. The photo and specs were identical to the Shadowhawk X800 – the price tad $10.01!

This is only one example. Keep in mind that there will almost always be some complaints about a product. However, a few minutes of reading the complaints is well worthwhile.

Google can be an amazing consumer protection tool.

How Odd

How Odd

Every media outlet offers the same themes at the same time.

One week we are bombarded with stories about refugees. The next week we are bombarded with stories about racism in the police department. Occasionally, the planned news stream is interrupted by a catastrophe, but then the stories shift back to the coordinated focus that the rich and powerful media owners use to manipulate public conversation and thought.

Looking at today’s news headlines we see the ‘critical’ news of the day.

A judge in a province of China ruled against same-sex marriage. Now here is a story that the entire world must know!

Curfew imposed in Kashmir. This is important to those of us in Baltimore because we might have gone for a stroll in Kashmir and broken the curfew.

American woman jailed for insulting United Arab Emirates. The woman was jailed on February 23^rd. Today, this is a lead story! Suddenly, 50-days after the arrest, this is an urgent story on news sites in America!

Oklahoma Lawmakers aim to increase cattle rustling penalties. (Important to ranchers in Oklahoma and cows everywhere).

My point is that although these stories may be of interest to us why are they the lead stories on aggregate news sites and in our daily newspapers.

Tomorrow, we could see a sudden shift in every news outlet’s focus. Tomorrow 80% of the news outlets could coincidentally run big stories about refugees, illegal aliens, or Donald Trump’s mismatched socks.

However, it is the repetitive stories that keep us under control. White vs Black, Hispanics vs Everyone, Refugees, Illegal Alians, building 'the Wall" are stories with a common purpose. Divide the masses and keep us arguing among ourselves so we do not notice the corporations, banks, and Wall Street tycoons laughing all the way to the off-shore bank!

We are being manipulated. It is our own fault. We gobble up tabloid soap opera like stories and we love any story that confirms our preconceived prejudices. We really are as dumb as the wealthy and powerful assume.

So why the coordinated ‘news’? The powerful cannot allow the masses to actually think. They cannot allow the masses to clearly see how the wealthy obtain and maintain their wealth. For example, they cannot allow us to demand substantial changes in banking laws, investment laws, or any changes that reduce profits. Most Americans will either shrug or deny that the American taxpayers can pay for more massive bailouts. In fact, the taxpayer bailout scheme is one of the best examples of our stupidity.

It is so easy to see the problems with using tax money to bail out banks and wall street investors and corporations. Think about the most basic facts.

When corporations, big investors or banks makes a huge profit, it is theirs! We have no problem with that fact. They earned it.

When corporations, big investors or banks lose a large amount of money, we cover their loss.

Imagine placing a huge bet at a casino and when you win, you keep the money and when you lose everyone else covers your loss! Wow! I want to go to that casino!

Yet, we see no media interest in producing a series of stories, similar to their coordinated effort to sway opinions about illegal aliens, refugees or White police officers shooting Black suspects. Again, I am not suggesting that these stories be abandoned, but where is the constant stream of media stories about the rape of the American taxpayer?

When the Internet and blogging came into being, there was a brief hope that the average Americans would engage in meaningful discourse. However, the media has so focused our attention and provided ‘proof’ that our prejudices are justified that we blog about what the media presents. It does not matter if we agree or disagree with the position of the media. What matters to the media owners is that we stay focused on anything other than those things that could interfere with the wealthy.

Belgium and Terrorism

Once again, the simple minded offer simple solutions to a problem in these United States that does not even exist. Politicians, haters, and well-intentioned people, ignorant of history, focus on the horrible murders in Belgium without any analysis of how Belgium arrived at such a point.

Geography plays a big role in any European terrorism. European nations are so small and so close to each other that travel between these countries provides terrorists with the ability to nation hop at will. The following European countries are smaller than Texas. 

Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, Andorra, France, Italy, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Switzerland, Vatican City, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Yugoslavia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, and Romania are all smaller than Texas.

Radical Muslims and those sympathetic to Radical Muslims did not just arrive in Belgium last year. For decades, going back to the 1980’s, Belgium has seen people in these groups constantly grow. By some estimates, there is so much empathy for radical Islam in Belgium that, Belgium has supplied the highest per capita number of fighters to Syria of any European nation –between 350 and 550, out of a total population of 11 million that includes fewer than half a million Muslims.

Belgium suffered waves of terrorism in the 1980s and 1990s linked to unrest in the Middle East. “There is a very long history of the connection between Belgium and France in the realm of terrorism,” said Rik Coolsaet, an expert on terrorism at the University of Ghent[1].

In the first half of the last decade, men from Belgium made their way to Iraq. So too did Muriel Degauque, a convert from Charleroi, who died in 2005 while bombing a US convoy in Iraq, becoming the first European woman to launch a suicide attack.

Others travelled to Afghanistan. In 2008, a network sending young Belgian Muslims to al-Qaida training camps was broken up. Several returned with the intention of committing attacks at home, prosecutors claimed.

Live Brussels explosions: multiple casualties after airport and metro attacks – live

The violent aftermath of the Arab spring provided a new motivation and new opportunities for extremists all over Europe, and militancy in Belgium itself was already broadening and deepening. One well-known, ostensibly non-violent, group of activists – Sharia4Belgium – that was responsible for a stream of aggressive hate-speech and alleged recruitment was eventually broken up.

Molenbeek, an area of 90,000 in the capital where some neighborhoods are up to 80% Muslim, is seen by many as a particular problem. “In parts of Brussels, there are areas on which the police have little grip, very segregated areas that don’t feel they’re a part of the Belgian state,” said Edwin Bakker, a Dutch analyst.

Note that all of these situations existed long before the EU refugee crisis.

Politicians and demagogues in these United States will not speak with a voice of reason. Instead, they will play on our fears and talk about sealing our border with Mexico, without every explaining what ‘sealing the border’ even means. They will talk about the ability of terrorists entering the United States by coming across the Mexican border, without explaining why terrorists could not enter the United States from Canada. True concern for protecting us from terrorism would include all borders. 

True concern about terrorism would address the millions of containers that pass through our ports every day and that if even one of those containers contains a nuclear or chemical bomb, we are at extreme risk.

If the issue is not about terror, what is it about? Fascists use whatever means necessary to convince us to blame dark skinned people, people of different faiths, people of a different culture for everything that is wrong in our lives. 

The rich and powerful support this nonsense so that they can continue to take as much money away from the workers. The rich and powerful support this nonsense so that their banks and Wall Street brokers can continue to gamble with our money with the certain knowledge that if they bet and win – they keep the profits and if they bet and lose, tax dollars will cover their losses. Blaming those that are different is almost the biggest fraud they commit. 

The biggest fraud is the belief that we choose our leaders in America. Really? Are you happy with the ‘choices’ that the rich and powerful give to us in the upcoming election? How many times have you wished for a good and honest candidate? No, the rich and powerful determine who we can elect.

In magic, this is called a forced card. You convince people that they are choosing a card, but you stack the deck in a way that they can only choose what you want them to choose.

---

[1] The Guardian, November 16, 2015

The game plan: Why They March and Protest

The most recent racially charged drama involves a white officer who cursed, pulled his weapon and arrested a teenage girl. The media limits its report and discussion to these facts, as captured on a video. There are facts that the media will not discuss or even include in their reports.

1. Officers received a call to a large disturbance at a private pool.
2. Before the call, A DJ setup in a public space next to the private pool in the neighborhood and played loud explicit (F-bomb) music for multiple hours (it is unclear if he was invited by a resident as no one has claimed responsibility).
4. The DJ was tweeting out invites to a “pool party” for $15 (obviously unauthorized by the neighborhood).
5. The teens began fighting with each other and pushing their way into the private pool. Some were jumping the fence. The security guard was accosted when he tried to stop the beginnings of this mob scene.
7. Some residents tried to settle things down. The teens started yelling racial slurs at the residents and started assaulting people and property (throwing bottles at cars and attacking a mother at the private pool with three young children).
9. The first officer on the scene was by himself. By that time, the party had grown to a large, aggressive crowd. As the officer arrived, many teens started running through the neighborhood. Many of the teens were being very aggressive and yelling at the officers as more arrived.

Today, in another city, protestors are camped out in front of the mayor's house to protest the results of an investigation into the death of a black boy who was running around waiving a gun that turned out not to be a real gun. By the way, the investigation is not even complete and the protesters know that the mayor is out of state.

The Ferguson Missouri protestors are demanding the pay they were promised by protest organizers.

So what is the game plan?

For politicians and community organizers the game plan is to gain publicity and move a step up the ladder.

For Blacks it is the possibility of getting huge payouts in the form of reparations for injustices done in the recent past. (Their original attempt at reparations for injustices up to the Civil War went nowhere).

For the media it is viewership, readership and a larger radio audience.

The biggest losers will not be law enforcement, although individual law enforcement officers will be sacrificed to mob justice (or the mobs demand for justice). The biggest losers will be the descent and hard-working Black Americans that are trying to escape the ghettos. The biggest losers will be Black children who will grow up believing that they are victims.

What Was Not in the Video (and what the media fails to report)

What was not in the video!

A DJ setup in a public space next to the private pool in the neighborhood on Friday and played loud explicit (F-bomb) music for multiple hours (it is unclear if he was invited by a resident as no one has claimed responsibility). The teenagers (both black and white) were being brought into the neighborhood by the carload because the DJ was tweeting out invites to a “pool party” for $15 (obviously unauthorized by the neighborhood). The teens began fighting with each other and pushing their way into the private pool. Some were jumping the fence. The security guard was accosted when he tried to stop the beginnings of this mob scene.

Some residents tried to settle things down. The teens started yelling racial slurs at the residents and started assaulting people and property (throwing bottles at cars and attacking a mother at the private pool with three young children). The first officer on the scene was by himself. By that time, the party had grown to a large, aggressive crowd. As the officer arrived, many teens started running through the neighborhood. Many of the teens were being very aggressive and yelling at the officers as more arrived.

This was a very dangerous situation for the officers and the teens and residents.

The news media has refused to report the neighborhood’s side of this story. The video being distributed is only a very small segment of what happened. This information being distributed by the media and others is extremely distorted. Imagine the officer feeling so overwhelmed by the crowd that he drew his gun. He also used profanity.

The problem with police officers is in the recruiting process: they hire human beings with the same fears that humans tend to have and we expect them to be Mother Theresa. I would much rather know that an officer let his frustration and fear out by using profanity and I doubt that any of these teenagers learned any new profanity from the officer.

By the way, on Sunday a far left liberal group (know as The Marxist, Maoist Collective) posted the home address and phone number of McKinney officer Eric Casebolt online.